The Young and the Old in Pictures

      Some of the artifacts I most enjoy discovering are photographs featuring four generations of family. These photographs depict a stark contrast between the extremes of age and youth, experience and innocence. The receding light of old age and the promise of new life mingle in the moment captured by the camera. The four seasons of life pictured below bring to mind A. E. Housman’s untitled poem about ageing (first and last stanzas):

When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.

So here's an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer's parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.

 

 This photograph shows my great-great grandfather Julius Ira Delamater (b. 1876) on the left and his mother Georgia Clifford Glover (b. 1853) on the right. In the middle is Julius's son John Ira holding his own son, either John (b. 1921) or Bill (b. 1922).

 This is one of the most remarkable photographs I've come across. On the left is Leonora Smith McKown (b. 1843), draped in a shawl and topped off with some peculiar headgear. Next to her is her daughter Edna Earle McKown Williams (b. 1876), mother of my great-grandfather Hugh, nicely turned-out in a three-piece suit on the right. My great-grandmother Elizabeth (Grandma Williams) is holding their firstborn and only son Hugh Jr., who died at just 20 months in 1925.

 Mattie Jane Potter Tate (b. 1864) is standing in front of the house in Barrow or Jackson Counties she may have lived in, surrounded by her son Alvin and his wife Sudie, their son Edgar and his wife Mary Jane, and my grandmother Bettye (Nana) in sunglasses and a swimsuit. This photograph was made around 1938.

My mother Beth stares quizzically into the camera in this snapshot from around 1961, as my grandfather Thomas Brayton (Pepaw) holds her on his lap. Behind them are (on right) my great-grandmother Grace America Tucker Brayton (Grandma Brayton) and (on left) her mother Emma Eugenia Bridges Tucker (b. 1874).

Grandma Brayton holds me in her lap in this photograph from spring 1986. She is flanked by Mom, Charles Reynolds Brayton (Grandpa Brayton), and Pepaw.

The family is gathered at First Baptist Church of College Park for my dedication in the spring of 1986. Mom and Dad are on left with Grandma Williams in the center. Behind her is uncle Keith and next to her are her daughters Aunt Betty and my grandmother Charlotte (Memaw).